5 Reasons Your Business Should Be Leveraging SEO

When you want to be found on search engines such as Google or Bing!, you use SEO to get the job done. It is a long term investment that can pay out big time, and every website owner should invest at least a little capital into their SEO plan.

But why should a business invest in SEO? In this week’s blog post, we are going to cover the top 5 reasons why a business should be leveraging SEO on their website, and how it can benefit them in the long run.

We are going to use the Fitness niche as an example throughout this post to help provide examples of why SEO works and is worth your time and money. We will use a fictitious company to illustrate these examples.

Disclaimer: All statistics pulled from the keywords (via Ahrefs) present in this blog post are based on Canadian statistics – NOT global statistics

1. Organic Rankings Last Longer Than Paid Advertising

This one should be obvious… but in case you don’t know – SEO lasts for as long as you can keep your rankings. When it comes to pay-per-click ads, you only stay at the top for as long as your budget allows you too.

SEO can last years, and allow you to focus your energy in other marketing channels like Facebook or YouTube. Using your domain authority to bolster your marketing campaigns is huge, and can really benefit your business in the long run.

“Moving up in the rankings is difficult and takes time, but once you’re there you get to reap the benefits for a long time.. Results on the first page of Google (The Top 10) receive 92% of all search traffic on Google. Traffic drops by 95% on the second page.”

If you maintain top rankings in your niche – you can outlast your competition easily. Let’s take a look at how you can do this.

Let’s say you own a fitness website that specializes in providing customers with professional fitness instructors and proven workout plans. Now, we must take a look at the keyword “Fitness”.

Keyword = Fitness

Keyword Difficulty = 26

Search Volume = 14k

Clicks = 5.1k

Paid Clicks = 6%

Organic Clicks = 94%

Cost-Per-Click = $1.20

Global Search Volume = 853k

Let’s quickly go over what each of these terms mean before we go any further.

Keyword Difficulty is a calculated value used as a guideline to represent how hard it is to rank for that specific keyword in search engines. It’s on a scale of 0-100, with 0 being easiest to rank for, and 100 hardest.

Search volume is the average estimated amount of searches for that individual keyword per month.

Clicks represent how many times a users clicked a result in the SERP (search engine results page).

Paid Clicks & Organic Clicks represent how many users clicked an organic or advertised result in the SERP.

Cost-Per-Click is how much it cost the advertiser every time a user clicked on one of their ads.

Global Search Volume relates to how many times the query is searched for globally in one month.

When we looked at the stats, we can see that the keyword “Fitness” is a strong keyword with lots of traffic, and a relatively low keyword difficulty. This is good! Keywords with high traffic and low difficulty are ideal for SEO.

Upon further analysis, we can see the vast majority of the clicks going through the Fitness keyword are organic (94%). This means that just 306 clicks went through the paid ads in the results (6%), which are priced at $1.20 per click.

If you properly invested in your SEO strategy, you could land top rankings across the Fitness topic, and keep those rankings for a substantial amount of time. When compared to paid advertising, you could easily pay three to four times more for similar results per month. Whereas organic SEO technically lasts forever once it is completed.

The only time I recommend trying out some paid advertising on Google is when you need quick exposure for a short amount of time. I wouldn’t suggest using ads as a long term plan to pay the bills at the beginning, unless your company is a monster that can afford to take calculated risks for months at a time.

2. Organic Rankings Are Cheaper Than Paid Advertising

In the above section, we mentioned that paid ads can be expensive with little to no long term visibility gains. And that remains true. PPC advertising can be an expensive endeavour, and I warn most new/small businesses about how much of a waste of time PPC can be if it is not done properly.

The same goes for SEO. If it’s not done properly, it can lead to a plethora of problems. But even if you are having a hard time getting everything setup – it is typically much cheaper to fix the SEO on your website, rather than go down the road of an expensive ad campaign.

Let’s take a look at the “Fitness Trainer” keyword:

Keyword =Fitness Trainer

KW Difficulty = 2

Search Volume = 400

Clicks = 160

Paid Clicks = 34%

Organic Clicks = 66%

Cost-Per-Click = $3.00

Global Volume = 12k

This keyword has a low difficulty rating paired with a high search volume making it perfect to target. The only problem, is it’s high CPC, and amount of clicks going through paid ads.

If you decided to take the organic route, it will be much cheaper to achieve your goals, but could take some time to implement. If you decide to go the paid route, you will end up paying a substantial amount more than if you just optimized your site in the first place.

3. Increases Brand Visibility and Awareness

One of the best ways to establish your brand as an industry leader is to top the organic rankings in Google and other search engines. This could be the turning point that makes your visitor become a customer.

Google loves brand mentions. So having your followers mention your site across the web will help you gain more visibility but more importantly… higher rankings.

Paid advertising can also do this, but having the rankings to back your ads up really comes in handy. Eventually, you can use paid advertising to funnel your traffic into your top ranked search queries. It all comes full circle.

Different companies use marketing campaigns to urge users to search for a particular query they are ranking highly in. This is a common practice, but can only be truly achieved if your brand has the proper visibility, and your consumer is aware of your company.

Let’s use AB Fitness Club as an example. AB Fitness Club is a made up company, and does not exist. Any correlation is purely coincidental.

Let’s say AB Fitness Club just started a marketing campaign to increase bookings with their trainers. They already maintain #1 rankings surrounding the “Fitness Trainer” keyword, and want to capitalize on these rankings.

So they launch a YouTube video campaign to raise awareness about the importance of fitness and why you should have a trainer. This leads to an increase in searches for “Fitness Trainer” where they are already ranked #1.

The website should see a rise in bookings through organic rankings, as well as direct marketing results all from the video campaign.

The recognition your brand receives for completing a campaign like this is HUGE! Any trust issues are typically absolved ahead of time, and it can help establish your company as an industry leader.

Furthermore is a fitness & lifestyle magazine created by Equinox. They built their following by leveraging their dedicated readers of their “Q” blog on the Equinox website. I believe it is a perfect example of creating brand visibility and awareness to build a massive following of dedicated followers. Check them out here.

4. Solidifies Trust In Your Business

Trust is becoming increasingly difficult to build with visitors. Especially if you are shoving ads in their face every two seconds. Luckily, we are going to share two of our favorite ways to build trust through your website that don’t involve testimonials:

High rankings in search engines like Google or Bing!

A proper user experience that delivers to the visitor

In order for #2 to come in play, the visitors need to find your website. That makes your website rankings the most important part of your trust building strategies. If no one can find you, how are they going to see the wicked UX you came up with?

Let’s use AB Fitness Club as an example again:

AB Fitness Club has just reached the #1 spot for the keyword “Workout Plans”, and is receiving tons of traffic. However, their conversion rate has dropped substantially. What’s the problem?

There are a few reasons for why this could be an issue

The product is overpriced

The product isn’t what it was advertised as

The consumer cannot find the product or finds the process confusing so they opt-out

The latter is the most common reason for why visitors opt-out of buying certain products. Make your interface as clean as possible, and guide your users to the end goal in a simple manner. Create a simple funnel that takes care of everything.

5. Increased Local Visibility

A proper SEO strategy will help increase your visibility across broad keyword terms, but it will also build up your local strength! SEO is the best way to show up locally around your city due to features like Google’s Map Pack. By utilizing local SEO tactics, you can rank above the big dogs of your industry solely based on location.

Above is an example of the map pack your business will rank in if you properly list your business on Google.

These map packs can be crucial to visitors, as they tell us a ton of important business information in a quick and effective way.

On top of that, you can still show up in the map pack for keywords you don’t rank for. Local SEO puts an emphasis on location more than anything… so utilize the power of Local SEO in anyway you can.

Using AB Fitness Club as a final example… let’s say they are offering fitness classes across the city of Calgary. Their competition would be strong consisting of big players like Goodlife Fitness and Snap Fitness.

It can be hard to beat their rankings right off the bat. That’s why properly optimizing your site for local search is crucial to your early successes. In order to rank above your competitors in the map pack, you simply need to be the closest option to the visitor, and even if you aren’t the closest – there is a chance you might land in the 2nd or 3rd ranked position. That isn’t bad!

Leveraging SEO Conclusion

In this weeks blog post, we talked about 5 different reasons as to why you should leverage the SEO on your website. From cost efficiency to local SEO – we covered a myriad of topics that can help even the most seasoned business owners.

Top 5 Reasons Your Business Should Be Leveraging SEO

Organic Rankings Lasts Longer Than Paid Advertising

Organic Rankings Are Cheaper Than Paid Advertising

Increases Brand Visibility

Solidifies Trust In Your Business

Increased Local Visibility

If you have questions, please don’t be afraid to ask. Top Shelf Media specializes in SEO services, and can provide you with the results you need. Contact us for more information.

Are you currently employing SEO strategies into your website? Let us know if you are using any of the strategies or tactics we provided, and make your website into a digital powerhouse. We would love to hear about them in the comment section below!

Liam Abbott

Liam is a SEO/SEM Specialist & Web Designer from Calgary, Alberta. He maintains a passion for contemporary design and everything search engine related. He is an avid gamer, and enjoys collecting entertainment memorabilia.

If you have questions or inquires for Liam, feel free to contact him by email anytime liam@topshelfmedia.ca